


Seedlings

by shsldespair



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Background Naegi Makoto, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Minor Kuzuryu Fuyuhiko/Pekoyama Peko, Nonbinary Character, Post-Game(s), Recovery, Therapy, Trans Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26437774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shsldespair/pseuds/shsldespair
Summary: Hope is a curious thing, coming in unexpected forms to those that don't expect it. For Peko, it might just be sun in their face, dirt under their nails, and a tomato plant.me looking @ peko pekoyama: let's get this bitch some therapy
Comments: 7
Kudos: 15





	Seedlings

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Growth, a Dangan Ronpa zine.

The day Peko Pekoyama awakes from her coma, she cries harder than she has since she was a child and feels the shame of failure cut deep into her core. The failure to die her honorable death, failure to keep her emotions under control, the unforgivable failure of her blade slicing through the skin of her Young Master’s face, each one leaves her drowning in the wish that she had just  _ stayed dead _ . When she finally gains control of herself, steadies the full body sobs that are intense enough to be painful on her atrophied muscles, she vows not to submit to weakness like this again.

The reunion with Fuyuhiko doesn’t go much better. He had been expecting something else, something more emotional, maybe, not this dead-eyed shell of a ~~girl tool~~ person ~~?~~ too weak to move in a hospital bed. As usual, she cannot react the way he wants, cannot be what he wants, and he leaves upset. Pekoyama is alone to broil in another miserable failure. The days pass, and pass, and she watches in stillness. She feels closer to a piece of furniture than the people that come to check on her.

When Naegi first proposes the garden to her, Pekoyama is skeptical. What could a few vegetable patches do for a bunch of barely-reformed ex-terrorists? He’s earnest, though and when one is handed a second chance they absolutely do not deserve, one must be grateful. No matter how little she cares about a garden, she can hear the edge of desperation in Naegi’s voice when he asks. She isn’t foolish enough to let him down when she owes him so much. Besides, the fluorescent hospital lighting is beginning to burn her eyes and she needs someone to escort her every time she so much as leaves the room. This offers a chance to see the sun without her movements becoming someone else’s burden.

She says yes.

It’s really not much. A few empty wooden beds, huge bags of soil, flimsy plastic gardening tools. (As if that could stop her. As if she can’t be lethal with just about anything you put in her hands.) He introduces to the other two he’s roped into this. Kirigiri. Ikusaba. They both wear neutral expressions and Future Foundation-issue suits. She doesn’t remember meeting either of them, but she must have some sort of history with the dark-haired one because when Pekoyama looks at her, her stomach twists into a tight knot. Naegi leaves the three of them to their work. It’s awkward at first, but Kirigiri switches to business mode and directs the other two. They build beds, haul earth from one side of the roof to another. Ikusaba can effortlessly haul twice what Pekoyama struggles to manage, but she tries not to feel too useless and press on. The burn in her muscles is too good to give up.

Her gaze is drawn to Ikusaba while they work. Something connects them, hidden in her stolen memories. Ikusaba can’t meet her eyes.

It’s a very long day. By the time she’s back in bed, Pekoyama’s body is sore and heat exhausted, skin pink and tender with a fresh sunburn. It feels good, though. Good to move, good to sweat. Whether or not the stuff inside her head is fixable, Pekoyama can force movement back into her creaking bones.

At some point, at least a week into their gardening, she finally asks Ikusaba why she feels so angry every time she looks at her. Ikusaba stares intently at the dirt in her hands for a long while before answering.

“I was one of you once. But I betrayed my sister after she tried to kill me. I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t. Now I’m the reason we’re all stuck here.” She says it so matter-of-fact it may as well be a grocery list. There’s something happening behind her eyes, but Pekoyama feels it would be rude, invasive even, to try and decipher what. She looks away.

“Your sister?” She asks.

Ikusaba looks at Pekoyama for the first time, really looks, with an expression somewhere between wonder and sadness. “You really don’t remember me…” She pauses. Pekoyama can only shake her head. She sighs and looks back at the dirt. “Junko. I’m Junko’s twin sister.”

There it is. It’s not so much a memory as a disembodied feeling, the same one she’s been feeling every time she looks at Ikusaba, but now she can identify the anger more precisely as betrayal and that makes it feel… wrong. She returns to tilling the earth without a comment, but as she works, she thinks of Ikusaba finding it in her to betray her sister. She thinks of the magnetic force she understands Enoshima to be, even lacking memories. She thinks of the kind of loyalty that got her run through with swords until her dead body hung limp over Fuyuhiko’s vulnerable form.

Every once in a while, she steals a glance at Ikusaba, who is still alive.

Pekoyama’s memories slowly return and with it, her anger at Ikusaba fades. It was never hers, really, just a residual, phantom pain from a life Pekoyama has painfully amputated herself from. She remembers the day eventually, watching on television as someone she was supposed to trust traipsed through the halls of Hope’s Peak with Naegi in tow, destroying bears, sabotaging the killing game, tearing down _everything they’d all been working for_ , and she _remembers_ being angry, but there’s nothing left of the feeling itself. Before she saw Mukuro’s change of heart, she saw Junko’s spears. Back then, she thought she would have been _honored_ if Fuyuhiko had finally let her die for him-- to die at your master’s hand is the greatest act of service one can give. After having done it once? It didn’t quite live up to the glamor.

She tells her eventually, clears her throat awkwardly and says, “I’m not angry. For what you did.”

Mukuro looks surprised. “Why not?”

She pulls a few weeds before answering. “...I needed her to save me from myself, I think,” she says carefully. “I had to stop being a tool before I could be a person. I don’t know if I’m a person yet. But I don’t think I should want to be what Enoshima made me forever. So it’s… okay. I don’t mind.”

None of the three are very talkative, so Pekoyama spends most of her time in silence, thinking about prison islands, about Despair, about bodies and personhood and all the things she can’t put words to when it’s her turn in group therapy. She’s always found clarity in work. The walls of the hospital are strange, sterilized, and uncomfortably tight. Out here in the air, the ache of her muscles shows her how she fits in her body.

One day, she asks for a wide brim hat and lightweight, long-sleeved clothes. Sunscreen or not, it’s getting truly masochistic, exposing her pale skin to the sun like this. When that request is granted, she experiments with more frivolous desires. She writes her name on the stake in front of one of the tomato plants and claims it for her own. It’s a purely symbolic gesture (it doesn’t really change the amount of work she puts in each day), but the sense of pride that comes with nurturing something that is  _ hers _ makes her feel less silly for doing it. She asks to stay on the roof to watch the sunset over the water and plants brightly colored flowers. Some things exist just to be beautiful. She borrows one of Hinata’s chest binders and asks to be called ‘they’. Shedding the frustrating expectation of womanhood makes their body fit more comfortably. Fuyuhiko doesn’t understand, but he trips over himself to get it right anyway.

“I don’t have to get it,” he said to them. “Just be yourself. Whoever that is, I’m fucking here for it.”

And for once in their life, they actually… believe him. If they come as they are, it might actually be enough.

It takes a few tries to get their tomatoes to produce. At first they overwater, or water incorrectly, or something. Either way, the plant withers under the hot island sun. They switch from daily sprinkling to a deep soak once a week and the plant seems happier. Too happy, even. The plant outgrows its cage, but its stalks are thin and they find no fruit among the lush leaves. Pekoyama is dumbfounded and spends days alternating between fussing with it and thumbing through the thin selection of gardening manuals available to them. It’s Kirigiri that finally figures it out. The chemistry of the soil is off somehow. They need to add softwood mulch to leech nitrogen. Then it’ll flower.

Once that’s solved, Kirigiri has to prune the plant for them. Things have gotten a bit too out of hand to snap pieces off by hand and she’s the only one of the trio allowed to touch a live blade. It’s annoying regulation for everyone, but Pekoyama doesn’t complain. Instead, they just dutifully collect the clippings that fall from the stem. They’ll toss them in the compost bin once she’s finished. Let them rot so it can nourish the now-unencumbered plant in its new growth.

When Kirigiri finishes trimming, Pekoyama thanks her.

“For the record, I don’t believe you would actually hurt anyone if I gave you the shears,” she says. “Rules, though.”

They understand.

When the plant finally bears fruit, it’s an exciting day for everyone. Most of the bounty will be sent to Hanamura in the kitchen for daily meal prep, but Pekoyama gets to take home the first one. They set it on their nightstand. They don’t know much about cooking, or… food in general, really. They’ve spent most of their life eating what’s put in front of them without complaint. They can’t just bite into it like an apple, though. That would be undignified, both for themself and the tomato. No, their painstakingly grown tomato deserves better. They’ll find a use for it in the morning.

…or maybe the next.

Or later?

Weeks later, their indecision has become a terminal affliction for the poor tomato. Once plump and red, it has become discolored and wrinkly with a small spot of mold growing near the stem. They poke it experimentally and their finger sinks into it, leaving behind a finger-shaped dimple. Irrational guilt fills them. No doubt they’ve eaten plenty of their own tomatoes, the ones sent off to the kitchen. It shouldn’t matter that one has gone bad. But.. it does.  _ This _ one was supposed to be special. Their first tomato, something all their own, and their stupid indecision has rendered it worthless.

Their own purpose may be null, but this thing still has a chance. Before they can talk themselves out of it, they sink their thumbs into the slimy innards and pull it into two pieces. Each piece takes two bites to swallow and none of them are pleasant. They barely bother to chew it lest they have to taste the rancid sourness of it. It feels like pulpy jello sliding down their throat. They choke back a retch that originates from a shuddering nausea deep within them, but it never fully goes away. Within the hour the nausea has settled in the back of their skull as a piercing headache. It’s the precursor to what becomes an utterly miserable night trapped in the bathroom with their head in a toilet bowl.

_Is this better?_ _Is this more_ ** _dignified_** _? How does the tomato feel about_ ** _this_** _?_

The mocking voice plays through their head as they retch. Someone must have heard them through the wall because at some point in the night, Tsumiki slips in to check on them. She’s worried, of course. Neither a communicable bug nor food poisoning on an enclosed island where everyone eats the same food is good news. They have to tell her. Looking someone in the eye and explaining that no, nothing is wrong, they just projected their feelings of inadequacy on a rotten vegetable might be the worst part of this night. Mercifully, she doesn’t question them, just puts them on IV fluids and excuses them from their chores in the morning.

Surprisingly, it’s Kirigiri that comes to check on them when they’re back in bed the next day. They’re sore from the inside out and their head pounds with a dehydration headache, but the worst is over. She sits.

“I’m writing an incident report,” she says. “Tsumiki says you intentionally ate spoiled food which caused your illness. I’m reporting it as self-harming behavior.”

They stare at her. A fair enough assessment, but what are they supposed to say?

She sighs. “My coworkers think this is unnecessary, but… personal sacrifice is important to you, Pekoyama. You need to suffer for the things that you love. I know how much you care about your work in the garden. I also know you’re never going to engage in the kind of self-mutilation behaviors everyone is watching for. If you didn’t do it  _ then _ , you aren’t going to do it here.”

She looks at them with uncharacteristic tenderness, the kind that only comes from mutual understanding. “A tomato doesn’t care if you don’t eat it, but… if you can’t bring yourself to throw it away, there’s always the compost pile. I know it isn’t the end you imagined for it, but there’s nothing wrong with finding a new one.”

The report will be filed away with their therapist. They’ll be watched a bit more closely, of course. They’ll be reminded, over and over, that recovery is a spiral and not a straight line, that mistakes are normal. What they won’t do, Kirigiri makes sure of, is take away their beloved garden. The question of who they are, really, under all the layers of abuse and kendo techniques, is still a daunting one to answer. They think, though, that maybe the answers lie somewhere in the earth to sprout with next season’s harvest.

Until then, there’s always work to be done.


End file.
